At its pre-TGS event in Shibuya, Tokyo, Team Ninja just announced that Ninja Gaiden 3 will feature online multiplayer for up to eight players with both cooperative and competitive modes. While we didn't see any actual gameplay, the developers gave us a handful of details to give us an idea of what we can expect.

The theme of NG3's multiplayer is "World of ninjas," and as you might expect, everyone plays as a ninja and each ninja challenges other ninjas to become the world's top ninja. No specifics were given about the actual modes, but we're told that there will be a mix of both co-op and versus, and that ambitious aspiring ninjas will even have a chance to challenge Ryu Hayabusa himself. Ninja Gaiden 3 has a strong focus on story this time, and it sounds like even the multiplayer will reflect that in some way, with a dash of ninja-style drama like the ability to betray your ninja comrades.

And speaking of story, Team Ninja also released a new trailer for Ninja Gaiden 3 meant to showcase the theme of "consequence" that will be integral to this chapter in Ryu Hayabusa's quest. The over-the-top dismemberment of its predecessor has been replaced in favor of more realistic enemy kills, and the idea behind that is to make the player really feel what it's like to cut a person down in cold blood. To that end, Team Ninja says they've taken great lengths to make the Hayabusa's adversaries feel like real humans, rather than just sacks of gore for you tear apart.

If you're still wary of Ninja Gaiden's notorious difficulty, there's a new easy mode called Hero mode along with the traditional normal and hard modes. Team Ninja is so proud of the story they've created this time around that they wanted to give less skilled players a chance to experience the story without the hardcore gameplay. Masochists have nothing to fear though, as we saw first-hand at the event how insanely tough the hard mode is – even the developer demoing the game to the crowd at the event couldn't pass even the very first level (which takes place in London, by the way) on the hard setting, and after two attempts had to drop down to normal. Yikes!